GB No. 3, winter 1990/91
1. RAILWAY
As is know, railway is the cheapest and the cleaned means of traveling by land. In the old times of horrid capitalism all railway lines had to be profitable - in another case they wouldn't ever have been built. And for example, Germans made profitable the line which joined Z±bkowice ¦l±skie (called Frankenstein before the war) with Srebrna Góra, Bielawa and other towns situated in close to Sowie Mountains. Even a cog - wheel railway joining Srebrna Góra with Nowa Ruda through Srebrna was profitable, too. It had been so before the second world war. After it had been finished and Silesia became a part of Poland again(?) both lines suffered from the same uncurable disease - i.e. unremonerrativeness the cog - wheel railway was not set back in motion. The line to Srebrna Góra survived till the seventies and there was dissolved. To express it exactly, in Srebrna Góra the only reminder of good railway magnificence of this former town is a piece of track which sticks out from under an asphalt road to Z±bkowice. There is no trace left as to the railway station buildings (in Silesia every village equipped in railway station together with an infrastructure). The line between Nowa Ruda and Radków is threatened to share this fate - up till now trains have stopped to use these.
2. SREBRNA GÓRA
Srebrna Góra - a beautiful village situated at the foot of the Srebrna pass, in the shade of huge fortress which had been previously called Prussian Gibraltar. A little town before the war, now a village but an extraordinary one - with a lengthened market square and a long line of tenement - houses in the main street, most of which was built in the 17 and the 18 centuries - Srebrna Góra survived the second world war in a perfect condition. Only three or four houses were burned (and not because of the war).
Devastation was begun only after the war, when several tenement-houses were demolished. This process shouldn't be mixed with post-war years only, it lasted till the late sixties.
There is no indication of a better fate for other tenement-houses - judging from their condition they will crumble soon. As far alterations - one of the houses has been being repaired for the last seven years and doesn't seen to be finished soon.
Before the second world war these used to be two churches in Srebrna Góra - a catholic one as well as a protestant one. Now there is only one left - it is the catholic one - while in the former Protestant church a pub and a disco were located some time ago.
It is easy to take railway lines into pieces - especially if they weren't built by our authorities, it is easy to put down monumental tenement-houses - since it is all ours. But according to which law does it take place? Well, one entering a school in Przyłęk faces a well painted fighting route of the Polish Army, which is decorated additionally with Grunwald swards stuck into swastika (Grunwald is a place the battle of which ended in great vicory of Polish troops over German in 1410). Symbolism of this picture is really ambiguous for an ignorant human mind, especially because Grunwald swords were German, too.
It is impossible to treat seriously all authorities' assurances of a Polish origin of Piasts' Silesia because those authorities agreed to let those Piasts (well, their ????) lie under a mount of sand in a win which once used to be a monastery church in Lubi±ż. Not to be continued.
Maciej Antecki
ZB no. 4-5/89